Manage Schedules

Version 9.2 includes improved schedule maintenance and options.

Overview

From Excel, the Manage Scheduling dialog will list all the schedules that you have access to, together with when they were last run.

Each schedule displays an icon, depending on the schedule's current status:

• Ready to run
• Disabled or not scheduled to run again
• Last run had an error

And when clicking a folder or schedule, the following toolbar items will be available:

Icon	Description
	Adds a new schedule in the currently selected folder
	Opens the currently selected schedule for editing
	Deletes the currently selected schedule
	Duplicates the currently selected schedule
	Runs the currently selected schedule
	Configure Distribution Lists
	Configure External Groups

Management

When you create a schedule, you are able to set some properties:

Name

A name used to identify the schedule in the management screen. Not shown to the recipients.

Description

A longer description, only visible on the Edit Schedule screen.

Enabled

Whether the schedule will be sent or not.

Repeat

How often the schedule should be sent.

Start date

When the schedule should be sent for the first time.

Allow recipients to run on demand

Adds the schedule to the recipients' XLCubed Web interface, where they can download the attachments as and when they need to. To work with this feature, the recipients should be specified through Distribution Lists (see below for details on how to select these).

Reports to Send

Each scheduled email can contain one or more reports, previously published to XLCubed Web. For each report, you can:

• specify a set of web parameters to fill in (also see Placeholders below)
• choose whether to send the report as an attachment, send the file to a fileshare, or include a hyperlink
• customise the filename
• choose whether you want any generated files to be PDFs, Excel files, PowerPoint files (if the report was published with PowerPoint configured), or embedded as an image (if the report was published with 'Allow image to be embedded in scheduled email' configured)
• select the worksheets to include in the report
• select the Multisheet options (if the report was published with Multisheet configured)

Additionally, the Merge files of the same type into one file option can be used to merge every report that shares a file type into one file. For example, all the PDF attachments will be compressed into one PDF file, and all the Excel files into another. The order in the files will be based on the order in the dialog, and the file names will be based on the first attachment of each type.

Placeholders

By entering these custom values as report parameters you can customise the file for each user.

Code	Description
%date%	Inserts the current date
%time%	Inserts the current time
%datetime%	Inserts the current date and time
%rolename%	Inserts the database role or roles that are being used
%groupname%	Inserts the name of the distribution group
%distributionlist%	(V10.0.129+) Inserts the name of the distribution list
%email%	Inserts the email address of the recipient. Ignored if %emailtosendto% is also used
%displayname%	Inserts the display name of the recipient. Ignored if %emailtosendto% is also used
%sendiftrue%	Triggers sending of the report. May only be used once per report
%emailtosendto%	Retrieves a comma-delimited list of email addresses from the report. May only be used once per schedule

%sendiftrue%

If %sendiftrue% is used the report will be generated normally, but only sent to users if this parameter is calculated to be TRUE.

This allows exception reporting, for example, if you had appropriate names defined in Excel, you could set the formula in the parameter cell to be

=Or(Sales < 1000, Losses > 50)

The report can be published with the exception-detecting cell exposed as a Web Parameter:

This parameter can then be used as the %sendiftrue% parameter when setting up the schedule:

%emailtosendto%

If %emailtosendto% is used, the email addresses defined in the schedule or distribution group will be ignored, and the addresses retrieved from this parameter instead. The value in the cell may be either one email address or a comma-delimited list.

Note that this parameter overrides the %email% and %displayname% parameters.

Allow Recipients To Run On Demand

Available from Version 9.2 - Enabling this option allows recipients of the schedule to download the schedule results from XLCubed Web > Preferences > Schedules.

Who to Send to

The recipients of the schedule can be specified in two ways: use pre-configured Distribution Lists, or using a list of email addresses (separated by semicolons, commas or new lines). Failure report recipients (i.e. those who will receive an error message if the schedule fails for some reason) can also be specified here.

Subscriptions

If desired, the schedule can also use a subscription-based model. It can work in one of two ways:

Recipients need to subscribe

People can see the available schedule in the XLCubed Web interface and subscribe to it, if desired

Recipients can unsubscribe

Anyone you specify here can remove themselves from the subscription, but new people cannot add themselves

Email Message

Here you can control the Email's subject line and message body. In each part, you can use the Placeholders described above, plus any defined in the SQL Administration app (Admin > Categories and in your Active Directory).

Formatting email

With Send email as HTML selected, you can use HTML formatting in the email message body.

Embedding images

In addition to the Placeholders above, you can also use %image1% and so on to control the embedding of any embedded images you have attached in the Reports to Send section.